Destiny Garcia, a 15-year-old, has been charged as an adult for killing her mom and her mother’s boyfriend in Brooklyn. Garcia claims she carried out the crime to escape the abuse she endured at the hands of the couple. The bodies of Rosie Sanchez and “stepfather” Anderson Nunez were found last Sunday night in the public housing complex where the three lived. Police say they were killed on December 27, and found dead after a concerned friend alerted police that they were missing, New York Daily News reported.

Garcia previously told police that her mother’s boyfriend had sexually abused her, but detectives said she was allegedly only abused by her mother. Garcia confessed that she and a teen friend stabbed the couple multiple times after Garcia shot them both. Investigators are still looking for her accomplice, who is believed to be her boyfriend, a cousin or close family friend. Garcia’s grandmother told reporters that she believes her granddaughter was sexually abused, and she will continue to vigorously defend her and support Destiny’s story.

“My granddaughter is telling the truth. I am here to support my granddaughter,” Jenny Perez said outside of the Brooklyn Supreme Court room, where Destiny Garcia was arraigned last Friday on murder charges.

Garcia is accused of murdering her mom and then going out shopping and celebrating New Year’s Eve at Times Square before confessing to another relative that she murdered her mother. Destiny allegedly gave two lengthy statements to police on January 3 and 4 about the December 27 murders.

In the first statement, she implicated her godbrother Jordan Santiago as an accomplice, but the second statement removed Santiago from the incident and included her 28-year-old boyfriend, Jerry Maisonett. Garcia told authorities that on December 27 she was packing her bags to go live with a cousin in order to escape the abuse at home. When her mother caught her with the bag, they got into an argument. Sanchez allegedly physically attacked her daughter, according to the statement. After the beating, Destiny called Maisonett and told him to get her a gun “for protection.”

After receiving the gun, Garcia told cops she originally hid it inside a drawer in her bedroom, but after her mom beat her once again, she removed the gun from the drawer and hid it inside the pocket of her hoodie, with her finger on the trigger. She then went into her mother’s bedroom and “fired a single shot that apparently missed — hitting the dresser behind her mother instead.” After she “readjusted her aim and fired at her mother a second time,” the bullet pierced Sanchez’s neck.

Court appearance scheduled for Destiny Garcia: The 15-year-old girl accused of murdering her mother and her mo… https://t.co/z2FMTVWpIS

According to reports, Nunez then “threw himself” off the bed as she fired a third bullet and attacked Garcia. A struggle for the gun ensued, according to the statements, and she dropped it and screamed for her boyfriend. Maisonett, who had been waiting in the hallway during the attack, stormed into the room, grabbed the gun and shot Nunez in the back, Garcia told authorities. After he dropped the gun, Garcia said she picked it up and tried to fire but was out of bullets.

She then decided to finish off her mother, who was still alive, with a knife she retrieved from the kitchen. Garcia repeatedly stabbed Nunez and Maisonett joined in the stabbing. She told authorities they left the apartment, leaving the murder weapons behind but her boyfriend ran back and took the gun. While inside, he allegedly stabbed Sanchez once in the chest before leaving “to make sure she was dead,” according to the statements.

While some neighbors were left stunned by the murders, believing the mom and daughter had a “good relationship,” others were not rattled and told reporters that Garcia and her mother had been having issues recently.

“It looked like they had problems,” Tiffany Jackson told the New York Post.

“She had an I-don’t-want-to-be-here-type attitude, like, ‘I can’t wait until she leaves,'” Jackson told the New York Times.

Destiny Garcia confessed to her cousin Jason Valentin on January 3, who turned her in to the police. On January 29, she pleaded not guilty to two charges of murder in the second degree during her Brooklyn Supreme Court arraignment last Friday.